ough for many definite conclusions. All the
earth's vast mysterious past is lumped under this title.

The definite history of the earth begins with the close of the dim
Archean era. It is the lapse from then till now, a few hundred million
years at most out of all infinity, which ever can greatly concern man,
for during this time were laid the only rocks whose reading was assisted
by the presence of fossils. During this time the continents attained
their final shape, the mountains rose, and valleys, plains, and rivers
formed and re-formed many times before assuming the passing forms which
they now show. During this time also life evolved from its inferred
beginnings in the late Archean to the complicated, finely developed, and
in man's case highly mentalized and spiritualized organization of
To-day.

Surely the geologist's field of labor is replete with interest,
inspiration, even romance. But because it has become so saturated with
technicality as to become almost a popular bugaboo, let us attempt no
special study, but rather cull from its voluminous records those simple
facts and perspectives which will reveal to us this greatest of all
story books, our old earth, as the volume of enchantment that it really
is.

With the passing of the Archean, the earth had not yet settled into the
perfectly balanced sphere which Nature destined it to be. In some places
the rock was more compactly squeezed than in others, and these denser
masses eventually were forced violently into neighbor masses which were
not so tightly squeezed. These movements far below the surface shifted
the surface balance and became one of many complicated and little known
causes impelling the crust here to slowly rise and there to slowly fall.
Thus in places sea bottoms lifted above the surface and became land,
while lands elsewhere settled and became seas. There are areas which
have alternated many times between land and sea; this is why we find
limestones which were formed in the sea overlying shales which were
formed in fresh water, which in turn overlie sandstones which once were
beaches--all these now in plateaus thousands of feet above the ocean's
level.

Sometimes these mysterious internal forces lifted the surface in long
waves. Thus mountain chains and mountain systems were created. Often
their summits, worn down by frosts and rains, disclose the core of rock
which, ages before, then hot and fluid, had underlain the crust and bent
it upward i